Uncut wood – here likened to the human soul-the uncut, unearned, unshaped, unpolished, native, natural stuff is better than anything that can be made out of it. In the notes of her demystified translation of the Tao Te Ching (2009), Le Guin expounds on that “block of wood”: George Orr is “like a block of wood not carved” (p 96).īut it turns out Le Guin likes blocks of wood. (Ouch, says the woman who practices the same profession.)īut Le Guin also drops a few judgmental remarks on her protagonist Orr, who is “unaggressive, placid, milquetoast…” (p 7), and “meek, mild, stuttering” (p 42). Haber, who was “no being, only layers”, and who “was not… really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them” (p 28)
Le Guin pulls no punches with her quarry, the arrogant therapist Dr. The dualism of personality, symbolized in the style of a PKD novel.īut, really, a celebration of a particular personality.Īt first, it may seem like a tale about two undesirable opposites, vain wit versus witless passivity. Can a passive, compliant person like Orr take back control of his dreams, and reset the world? But when the landscape of reality starts changing, steady Orr is not sure he can trust the ambitious Dr. In The Lathe of Heaven, George Orr visits a therapist to deal with his lifelong problem of affecting reality with his dreams, what he calls “effective dreaming”. (One of most difficult concepts to teach to a classroom of 9th graders scratching themselves in their uniforms on that one day of the year when state-mandated teaching objectives cross into the territory of “Eastern Philosophy.”) One of the most radical, yet unradical, ways of thinking.įundamentally paradoxical, yet still, fundamental.īoth the thesis and antithesis for change. The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula K Le Guin (1971)
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